Chernobyl created a dead zone of empty cities and villages as people were evacuated out of the area in the days following the meltdown. Here's a website by a Russian woman who goes to Cherynobyl to drive around on her motorcycle. She takes pictures and has put them up. It's the image that all those apocalyptic novels foretell in doom and gloom, but real. It happened.

From the Dead Zone

A source for more information on the Chernobyl disaster can be found here. This is dry, but good to read for fairly solid and very dry thoughts on the issue. Here's a much more readable report that says most of the same things without all the documentation.

It's impossible, it seems, to establish just how much this has effected the world and people. But let's hope nothing like it happens again.